Thursday, November 18, 2010

Fake Is 'Til You Know It

Sept. 1st, 2010

One of the women I work with was dressed in her finest yesterday and I told her so. She is a snazzy dresser (don't you just love snazzy?) anyway and always looks hot in my opinion, and yesterday was just one of those days when she was working it. She told me that she was dressing her best because she didn't feel her best.

I totally get that. I constantly tell my students that one of my mottos is "Fake it till you know it" and it has served me well. I have dressed to the nines when I have just been dumped, I have packed our house convinced that if I pack it we will sell it, passed an interview to take a job that I have no idea if I can do, and taught students subjects I just learned days or hours before. If you can set your jaw and walk into a room like you know where you are and what you are doing, people are going to think you know what you are doing. And pretty soon, if you are lucky, you will know, and then you aren't faking it anymore.

During this business plan set up there is a lot of faking it as we go along. I look at paperwork we need to fill out in one window and in another window look up the terms I don't understand or have never heard of (damn you acronyms). Yesterday I finally got through to one of the purveyors we are looking at who said that she would happily give me all the information we require as soon as I show her a Resale Certificated and our Tax Exempt Form. I fumbled through it saying we didn't have it yet but could get her the information soon and then got off the phone thinking, crap! why didn't I know about this Resale Certificate??

I googled it, of course, and got a whole lot of nothing, that actually made me feel a little better, and then asked my business genius friend if she knew. Thankfully she didn't, which made me feel even better, and told me she might be referring to our business license. That I have!

I sent the purveyor an e-mail trying my best to make it sound like she was the one that didn't know what she was talking about, I know that sounds mean, I took some face points, I explained that I was attaching my business license and I wasn't sure what she was looking for as far as a Resale certificate and if she needed something else than to let me know. I also told her that since we were in Oregon (she actually asked me nothing about any details of our business including where we were going to be located), that we didn't have a Tax Exempt Form.

That was "acceptable" and she forwarded on the requested information. And after a week of playing phone tag and her insisting that I call her instead of exchanging e-mail, I feel as though I won a small battle. Or maybe I lost. If this is indicative (seems to be my new favorite word I've been using it a lot) of their business practices do I really want to get in bed with them? And they don't provide any of the shelving or display pieces that the other purveyor is going to give us. A "you want us, we don't need you," big company stance. We'll see how our negotiating techniques fair when I get her on the phone again.

One of the other things I tell my students about cooking is that sometimes you learn more from doing it wrong than from doing it right. This little adage I would rather skip this time around.